AIR 109-112

Chapter 109

I finished the book. It was a lot. I had to play with time a bit just to get through it all and for the first time in a long long long time, I was tired. My limits had been tested and pushed. 

I was drained. 

I laid down flat on the ground and the book laid blank next to me. 

Done already?

It was back, and it was mocking me. 

“I finished reading it.”

The book floated above my head and flipped in mockery. 

And that is all it took to incapacitate you?

“Apparently,” I replied. 

First Wukong now the Tome. 

On one hand, they weren’t really wasting any time or effort on me. To them, talking to me and even conversing with me took less effort than breathing. They were beings of immense magnitude and it wasn’t unheard of for God-Imperiums to engage in such behavior. Some God-Imperiums raised thousands of disciples all scattered across existence. 

Some imbued their very will into the realms they ruled, making their dao a natural law upon the world. 

But this wasn’t that kind of realm and I sure wasn’t a disciple of either Sun Wukong or the Tome. Wukong was here for Nai but what about this Tome?

I still couldn’t figure it out. I had hunches and guesses but nothing concrete.

You know your ailment and its nature, now you should move to fix it.

“I should.”

I once said that the soul was like a book, and all that you experienced and thought would be recorded on it. That was a correct analogy for it in more ways than one. If the soul was a book then a God-Imperium was an overwhelming story. That explained the reactions I had to them. My soul was simply incapable of even experiencing their presence without being rewritten in their image. 

And a lot of my soul had been damaged with Dane’s death. My soul, my book was bits and pieces of different stories. Each true but entirely different. It was like Lord of the Rings had been mixed in with an episode of Caillou. 

Mismatched and wrongly written, that's what I was. Sometimes I acted as Dane, others as Bill. The solution was simple and terrifying. 

Very well, let us leave then.

“Us?” 

I shall accompany you in partial aid, as Wukong has. 

I looked at my tale and it curled in excitement. Great, a new tumor. 

Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful. But these weren’t gods that would aid me. These were beings that would help me only in ways they deemed fit. Wukong hid me from God-Imperiums and this Tome, well I didn’t know what it was doing yet.

I will guide you through existence. A necessity. You running into other God-Imperiums would bring disaster.

“If there’s a place you gotta go, I’m the one you need to know,” I muttered. 

Yes. I am the map.

“You know Dora?” I asked sitting up. 

I know everything.

“To the Hills of Life then, tomorrow.”

The book looked at me and flipped a little aggressively. Then it closed and settled down. 

The cure, or at least a part of it was a plant out in the Cosmic Forest. I would need to leave Ah-Marin and venture out into the greater multiverse to find it. I was fine with the idea, particularly if I had a God-Imperium guiding the way. 

A part of me didn’t want to go through the trouble of fixing my soul. But that wasn’t something I could do anymore. I had made mistakes and unnecessary risks, and for those risks, I had almost died. 

They weren’t mistakes in the truest sense, at least not from where I stood. I felt whole and I was whole, but I was a mortal’s definition of whole. 

Intelligence, wisdom, power, and ability, I matched Dane in all of these things, but perspective was where I fell behind. 

I was Bill. I still used the name Bill. I still thought like him. I was Bill, if Bill had suddenly become Dane, not if Dane had suddenly become Bill. And that was all too easy for me. Dane was empty, lacking. Writting Bill into the big gap that was Dane’s personality was all too easy. 

But that came with its own problems. 

“This is all so sudden,” I said. “I just want to close my eyes and settle down.”

You’ve been unbothered for billions of years. Even God-Imperiums are not given eternal peace.

“Yes, but can’t I just let it be? Do I need to fix my soul?”

You are no fool.

I frowned. There was a reason it was doing this. 

It probably owed me in some part. Wukong and the Tome were both overly generous. I had given them something, revealed something, and they had reciprocated manyfold. 

There was curiosity of course. I tickled them somewhat. I was unique, as was my creation. My dao was strange and the nature of my soul was strange as well, but something was compelling the Tome to help me.

I didn’t know what, but my guess was knowledge. Either I had more potential than I thought or-

Yes. Something is coming. The horizon of existence glows with new light. There is something on the way and I tell you this, Bill, do not be complacent. Grow.

It was words this time, not pages. Audible words were spoken with the very essence of truth and wisdom. The words came with the ideas, with the shadows, with its worries. 

Something was coming and the Tome wanted me to survive it. 

“SHIT,” I spat out. “What’s happening? Why me? What can I do?”

Nothing. For now, you are but a tool. Wukong is fair if anything, so he rewarded you and the same can be said for me. But…I see more than he does, or rather I care to look for more than him. You can be something Bill, you can also be nothing. Either way, the effort I exude is miniscule regardless. If you grow, you grow, if you don’t, you don’t. 

The words were simple, but the last part stuck with me. There were consequences to just hiding.

And if that warning came from a God-Imperium. If a God-Imperium implied concern then what was there for a soul like me to do?

Chapter 110

I made my preparations. I put Gauntlet in charge of a few things and gave Rin Wi some command over the golem as well. 

Ah-Marin wouldn’t notice my absence, not if I did things the right way. I’d be out and in within the hour. The time flow rate for Ah-Marin was fairly slow compared to the rest of existence. 

But still, I prepped and prepared like I never had before. 

The Tome scared me. It was one of the few keepers of knowledge, an ancient being of wisdom and truth and it had told me that I had made mistakes. Miscalculations. I had slipped up and set my own life at risk, and that was partially true. 

And that terrified me. 

The array was no longer just a strange accident but a horrible fault. I had allowed it to grow incorrectly. I had mishandled a billion-year project. I had faltered. 

Compared to what Dane would have done, my faults were tremendous. But then again, my faults weren’t faults themselves but rather differences. I hadn’t overlooked anything, I had merely not seen it from where Dane would have.

A difference in perspective, a difference in ego. But the Tome spoke as if that was my fault. It acted like Dane would have seen it, along with any capable being of my rank. 

I felt like a blind man who thought he could see. 

Sure the array’s troubles had been my fault, but the rest of my mistakes? I didn’t really know what I could do about those. 

Maybe they were faults in the most basic sense. Maybe they were accidents that would have led to my death, faults I couldn’t have predicted. But if they were, how could I be expected to take responsibility for them?

I shook my head. 

“Can I trust myself though?” I asked. “If I made mistakes that dire, can I trust myself to go out there?”

Yes. The Tome replied. 

“But how?”

The mistakes do not matter.

“What?” Now I was even more confused. 

They are a symptom of the deeper issue. They do not speak of a notable fault like pride or arrogance. No one word can describe the state of your soul. The problem lies in your mauled soul and Frankensteined essence. You are not whole. One eye sees too close and the other too far. It is not the distance that is the problem but the misaligned vision. For now, every decision you make, you must think over twice. Once as Bill and once as Dane. Bill to choose and Dane to choose wisely. 

“I…see.”

That cleared up a lot, and it gave me some confidence back. 

I ran through my supplies and felt Wriendler’s hilt by my side. 

I thought and thought again. 

“To the Hills of Life,” I murmured. 

Then I stepped out of Ah-Marin.

Wukong had scared the shit out of me. 

He was on my side, in a way. But he still terrified me. The whole experience had been, cosmically emasculating. As a cultivator, you spent most of your time fighting for your agency. Even within a sect, the more power you gained, the more freedom you had. 

And over time you gained certainty, an understanding of the world that you knew to be limited but trusted enough to believe in. 

Meeting Wukong had turned that belief upside down. He had found me, known me, and then notified me that if it wasn’t for him, I would have faced certain death. And even then I hadn’t learned my lesson. I’d gone off to Lynoria and wandered within the halls of the Eternal Tome, another God-Imperium.

And there again I was wrong. The Tome was also on my side, I think. I still didn’t understand it or Wukong really, but they weren’t against me. 

Both of those experiences made me grow of the Void and all that lived in it. 

But then again, what protection did realms give me from God-Imperiums? An ant was an ant out in the open or beneath a blade of grass. And I doubted God-Imperiums would face any challenge from the old realm of Ah-Marin. 

I shivered and clung tightly to my blade. 

Mortal, a voice spoke in my head. 

“What?”

You worry like a mortal, the Tome repeated.

It was right. 

What would Dane say?

I was underneath the God-Imperium’s power, but so what? I was no threat to them and they chose to help me anyway. And remaining in Ah-Marin would provide no cover. The best thing for me to do is to go out there and fix myself while avoiding other God-Imperiums. 

And even if I met them, I could call myself a disciple of the Eternal Tome, I had the tale of Wukong and a Tome that denoted their sect. And the Tome had given me the right to call myself that. 

I would be safe so long as no opportunistic being below the sixteenth rank came after me. 

Realistically, this was the safest option.

But it annoyed me. It annoyed Bill, the guy who wanted to hang out in an old forgotten realm and gaze at the stars at night. It disrupted a new need in me, one that wanted to hear nothing but the winds running through the leaves during midday. 

I worried and feared and that gave way to something else. 

My dao. Yes, there was no peace here in the cracks of reality.

I walked or rather moved through the nothingness and the itch grew. 

If this was what righteous cultivators felt then I could understand why they ran around constantly attacking anything that they deemed immoral. 

I stopped. I couldn’t travel like this, could I?

I circulated my qi. I had no dantians, not at this rank. You lost your dantians at the ninth rank, which mixed into the essence of the self.

It was the moment one entered the demigod rank and was able to leave a realm without worrying about the consequences of the void. You coalessed your being into one form, still made of parts, but no longer defined by physical laws. 

Higher level interdimensional sects didn’t even consider their children to be full grown until they reached the ninth realm. 

Either way, past that rank, all that was left was the self. There was the soul of course, the mind, the spirit, but they were all less of an independent thing and more a part of the whole. 

I moved my qi through them, feeling out each part then feeling the whole of my being. I breathed. 

It was a breath made of qi, an exhale of myself and an inhale of the world around me. Chaos came into my being, but it was quickly settled, circulated, understood, and dissipated. 

This world was not peaceful. No matter where I looked, I could see discord and war in the distance and my dao was telling me to move. To do all I could to fix it. 

But I couldn’t. Even if I moved now, I wouldn’t be able to do anything before I was flicked away into nothingness. 

So I had to accept it. I had to do all I could without destroying myself. I had to put a value on my own peace, above that of the world.

My heart stilled and calmed down as I circulated the qi. My dao grew and changed. 

I looked out into existence and saw the Heavens and the Hells. They were beyond me for now, and maybe forever.

I would do what I could, when I could.  

“I wonder, is the Hills of Life that would fix me or the journey there?” I asked the book. 

Both of course. You need the herbs within there, but you also need to live and breathe among your peers. Live as you are, and live with your dao. Growth corrects things in some way and it worsens them in others. 

Chapter 111

The greatest thing about the void was how big it was. In theory, you could traverse its length in an instant. I could stand here and sense both the Heavens and the Hells. 

But size, or rather capacity, was a strange thing. 

In the distance for example shone Lynoria like a bright lantern in the sky. It was a dot, a speck among infinity but it was also infinite itself, containing an endless set of realms and people. 

Yet I could see it. I could know its outline and trace its edges. 

And that was reality. Realms of endless magnitude and power dotted the nothingness, their presence striking through the void. 

Some realms were close, but even distance wasn’t so simple out here. 

The Cosmic Forest was the best example of that. 

It was the Forest. It was everywhere. It was the small shadows in a grove. It was where children slipped to at times with the Fey. It was the home of Dragons and Beasts, Fairies and Elves. 

It was the Forest, every forest from the dark woods of witches and wolves to the delightful groves of druids and refuge. They could all lead to this forest and they all did. 

This was the place of wild things and contradictions. The Celestial Realm that reached both the Heavens and the Hells. 

There were multiple paths of direction out here. One was of course the first and most known, the Heavens up above and the Hells down below. But there was also Order and Chaos. 

On one side lay the outer realm of Laws. That was the home of the Second Keepers, the place where all things made sense, the home of all physical laws. And to the other side was the Chaos Realms. A place riddled with nothing but chaotic qi. Orderless, without any rules or definitions. 

Most beings didn’t go in that direction unless they had a nature tied to chaos. It was dangerous there. 

But this was only two sets of directions. One didn’t affect the other in any way. Navigation out here was all about where you were and where you wanted to go, the journey and distance could vary in infinite ways. 

But more important than any of that was your ability to traverse them.

Powerful beings took the most direct routes. 

For example, the path from the height of the Heavens to Lynoria was a straight dissent that passed through multiple Celestial Realms, each ruled by a God-Imperium. And unless you wanted to tread through the realm of these beings, you would avoid those realms and instead slowly descend down via other realms. 

It was like a highway filled with powerful cities, each of which would judge you as an individual. 

Lynoria was the best example of this ideal. It was the most popular celestial realm and only one major rule of no fatalities, but even that made it unappealing to certain groups of people. 

Most of the Heavens refused to let anyone who was not a member of their sect or shared their ideals enter. The same could be said for the hells and any of their rulers. 

If they allowed strangers to enter their domain, then it directly related to their cultivation. The Divine Beast Emporium, for example, raised, trained, and kept beasts. That was a part of how they cultivated their dao and selling those beasts only strengthened their dao. 

It was the same in most celestial realms that were ruled by God-Imperiums. There were a few free ones, ones that afforded a level of autonomy to individuals. 

But I would be avoiding those as well. I had not one but two bits of God-Imperiums on me, and bringing those into another God-Imperiums domain might doom me to a death beyond my comprehension. 

That, and my destination wasn’t too far away. The Cosmic Forest was everywhere, like the Sea of Death. There were a few Celestial Realms that it didn’t touch, like the Hive Lands and The Endless City, but aside from those few places, the Celestial Forest was everywhere. 

Any realm that had a forest tied itself to the Cosmic Forest. It was special in that way. It was rare, very rare, but people would stumble into it all the time. Even on Earth, a realm that must have had almost no qi, there were stories of fey. 

Some said that the Cosmic Forest even touched Eden and the First Keepers. Others said it led into the backwoods of Olympus. 

A forest was an ecosystem. Less defined by the trees and animals and more defined by the connections between them, and that was what the Cosmic Forest was. It was the food cycle, it was the pattern that all of life came together to sing. 

And it was the home of the Fey, the rulers of the forest. 

It was also a celestial realm but unlike Lynoria or the Divine Beast Emporium, it was ruled by a number of God-Imperiums. 

It was a special type of celestial realm, one of a few like the Hive Lands and the Sea of Death. 

Each God-Imperium had its own domain within the realm, but they all shared some kind of dominion over it. In the Sea of Death, it was an ocean, with Death Gods claiming islands of realms that floated atop it. 

It was the same for the Hive Lands. All of these beings controlled a concept so similar to one another that it served them to be close to each other rather than apart. Their Daos were similar and their natures were similar.

I traversed the void. Not far, but not close either. 

If other realms were cities then the Cosmic Forest was a forest. It spread and spread and spread, itself to no end. One could enter it at almost any point, but the forest had parts. 

And the part I was looking for, the Hills of Life was not found so close to Ah-Marin. 

I wandered through the void, following small qi streams set up by Array Masters before me, and a few set up by myself. 

They served as connection points for the small beings of the void, beings like me at the thirteenth rank. They had no meaning or laws in them, not inherently. It was merely a wiring of qi, going from one realm to another. Then, regardless of how far apart those realms were from each other, there would always be something to connect them. Something that touched the both of them, tying their existence closer and making the journey quick. 

I liked these pathways. To me, they were like cobblestones. Small roads built by relatively small beings, meant for others like me. And for those weaker than me.

That was the thing Dane had loved about arrays. 

In theory, they were simple small things. The three fundamental forces of qi are push, pull, and hold, and using those basic concepts a twelfth-rank being was able to tie even realms together.  

It was nothing really, mere ants bridging a puddle. But it was still impressive, at least it was to me. 

I stood next to a small realm and looked around. 

Navigation changed based on where you were and what you looked for. Here, I was on the outskirts of a Celestial Realm, one ruled by one of the more appealing God-Imperiums. 

They won’t care if you trespass on their domain. The peace of us that are with you are minute, and observational in nature. Many disciples of God-Imperium sects carry similar pieces of their kings. You are not so important as to draw out God-Imperiums by the dozens. 

I trusted the Tome, but I also wanted to feel safe. And if that came at the cost of a longer trip, then so be it. 

The problem was that Celestial Realms just glowed. They were like stars in the sky, you could see them and aim for them. But I kept using planets and moons instead, minor realms that just couldn’t be sensed from so far away. 

“Would it be safer?” I asked. “Is there some threat hidden along my route?”

I do not protect you or divine your troubles.

“Then I’ll stick to my way,” I replied. 

I didn’t think I was important either, but two God-Imperiums now knew my name and had helped me. Obviously, I had done something that I myself couldn’t quite grasp, and while I trusted the Tome, I don’t think it disagreed with my actions. 

“Do you actually want me to travel directly through the celestial realms for some reason or are you just trying to manage my ego.”

I am simply being truthful.

God-Imperiums sucked. 

Chapter 112

From here, certain realms were close by, including the Cosmic Forest. But that was always close by. The problem was the specific part of the Cosmic Forest was much further off. 

If I were in the Hells for example, I would see the Woods of Hell. And if I were in the Heavens, I would see the groves of Holy Druids. But the Hills of Life, the specific part of the Cosmic Forest I was headed to, was still a good way off, assuming I didn’t travel through the celestial realms. 

“Maybe if I head to the Halls of Life and then through the…”

My mind raced. There were an infinite amount of realms, along with an infinite amount of paths. I was calculating danger and death and many other possibilities. 

There were celestial sects who specialized in this stuff. The Star Seeker, the Pathmen, many groups made fortunes just navigating the void for people. There were paths for God-Kings, because even they had to worry about celestial realms, paths for ninth ranks, even paths for fresh immortals. 

Realms could be turned into ships. There were universes that changed their nature and were pushed through the void with the qi, traveling through the emptiness. The most well known was the Lying Realm of Plane, it was said to be what Plane wanted it to be. 

The point is that there was a lot of methods to navigate the multiverse. Some were simple, some were complicated and it all depending on your needs and abilities. 

If you were a God-Imperium, you could slide through the void easily. But if you were someone like me, that was where your problems started. 

Aside from God-Imperiums, I was also trying to avoid anything beyond my current rank. Fourteenth ranks and above were far beyond my abilities, and even beings at my own rank could become a threat. 

I wasn’t special. I was at the thirteenth rank, but there were many others at that level. I wasn’t the strongest or most powerful at this rank. Hell, I’ve heard of kids only a thousand years old reaching this rank.

But the chances of a fight among beings at our level were relatively low. We were established in a way. Immortal. Any being willing to fight someone of a similar rank would be risking death, and that wasn’t common at our level. 

But I still planned for that too. I was ready for a fight. It almost felt like I was expecting it. 

You took my words to heart, the Tome noted. 

“Yes,” I replied. 

It knew me. It knew my thoughts, what I had thought, what I would think, and what I would do. 

So even my thoughts were up to its desires. 

“If you know everything, why do your followers search other realms for knowledge and trade for it?” I asked. 

I do not know everything. Things of other God-Imperiums are limited from me, and I have adversaries.

“Yog-Sothoth,” I muttered. 

Yes. Knowledge is the domain of many beings. Even you are unpredictable. You have been touched by Wukong and that blinds me in ways. My peers are ever present and that limits my actions.

They were an annoying bunch. 

“Why does Yog-Sothoth hate you anyway? Do your domains overlap so much that it wants to eat you?”

No. It is a thing of knowledge and consumption. It seeks to be all and to do that it must know all. I would be a resource, a pool for it to draw from and understand. 

“Strange thing for an eldritch chaos god.”

Chaos is not empty. It has definition, more than anything of order could contain in some ways. It is information-dense and meaningless. Meaning is pattern and truth. It is language, words that form ideas. Chaos is empty bleatings and noises of nothingness, defined only by its existence. It can mimic order, it can have patterns but it isn’t meant to do so. The noises might make words and say sentences, but there is no intention behind them, no knowledge. That is Yog-Sothoth, it contains all but contains none as well. It is greed and consumption, an amalgamation of all things, those with sense and without. 

I said nothing to that. 

Yog-Sothoth was a known enemy of the Eternal Tome. Probably the biggest one. It was a God-Imperium eldritch beast, one of the first to have ever been made. It was the enemy of the Keepers, and part of the reason the First Keepers had hidden Eden away from everyone. 

I looked towards its realm. It stayed near the Chaos Realms, a place empty and mostly realmless. Realms needed order to survive. They were a collection of rules and laws capable of holding lesser existences, bubbles of order in the vast chaos of existence. 

It is hideous, the Tome commented. 

I kept moving. 

Realms passed me by the thousands and each step changed the realms in the distance. What was close to one realm would be further away from another.

To get to the Hells from Olympus for example would be a great distance to travel, but from Olympus to Hades was nothing, and then from Hades to the Hells was only a few steps away. Hades floated on the Sea of Death as all death domains did, but you could travel from them and into other realms. The Sea of Death and the Cosmic Forest were strange in that matter. They were realms with no true boundaries, everywhere yet nowhere at once, concepts that could be found almost everywhere.  

The Hills of Life were located near the celestial realm of Aftol, a realm ruled by a God-Imperium of the same name. She was a plant who manifested in various forms. She was said to be one of the first fruits of Tree, a sister of Yggdrasil. 

But that wasn’t important, at least not to my needs. The important part was that she was a free realm. Anyone could walk through her domain and anyone could do as they pleased within it. The only she didn’t allow was the death of her own kind. 

I wasn’t journaling so close of course. Her realm shined close in the distance, but I had enough sense to avoid her lands. If for no other reason then her species. 

Plants weren’t sentient, and that was by choice. They were growth, the fundamental nature of life. They differed from each other, but it all led back to growth. Even as a God-Imperium, sentience was a secondary trait. To them, souls were more of a tool than an identity. 

Growth was all that mattered. 

They were strange and terrifying in some ways.

I looked towards the Cosmic Forest and walked towards it. The void dissipated, the nothingness left and suddenly, I was in a forest.

The Cosmic Forest, The Ses of Death, The Hive Lands, and a few other realms existed like this. 

They were everywhere, due to the nature of these realms. Death could be found in both the Heavens and the Hells, and the same could be said for forests. They were concepts that permeated all realities so thoroughly that they were not limited to one spot within the void. 

Wherever you were, the forest was always there. 

I walked within it. 

Trees surrounded me, though not trees of mere wood and leaf but trees that housed realms by the thousands. Yggdrasil’s children, holders of life and bearers of worlds spread out around me and into infinity. There were other things of course.

Divine Beasts in the distance, wolf packs howling into the greater void, it was a forest in every sense. 

But I should be safe here, quickly I walked towards the hills in the distance. 

They weren’t hills of course. They were mounds of qi, earth that could withstand the blows of a God-King. And there were many of them, so many, an endless amount it seemed. 

Yet I could see beyond them and into the valley that hid behind. 

It strained me to see it all. My mind hurt beneath the brunt of the information I consumed but I looked at it anyway. I needed to know if there were any threats, any hidden beasts. My sense could only spread so far but I needed to make sure there was nothing there. 

I was like a mortal squinting off into the distance to see if there were any threats in the distance.

The Hills of Life were fairly safe if you stayed near the edges, but deeper there were said to be God-King-ranked beasts in their depths. 

I sighed. 

The Cosmic Forest, like the Sea of Death, didn’t have a skin. It didn’t have an edge to it. It reached it was a realm without borders, and concepts that were associated with it found themselves within it. The Hills of Life, for example, were right underneath Aftol, but from here you could also see Aftol’s roots digging into their earth. They connected with her domain and parts of them were within it, but they were also a part of the forest. 

But I would be safe if I stayed away from the roots. And besides, the thing I was looking for shouldn’t be too hidden anyway. 

Then I saw the lady and the dragon running at me.